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Thursday, March 15, 2012

The girl who doesn't age turned 16!

The girl who doesnt age turned 16!
Brooke Greenberg is the size of an infant, with the mental capacity of a toddler. She turned 16 in January.

At about 16 pounds and 30 inches, 16-year-old Brooke Greenberg has not
aged significantly, physically or apparently cognitively, since she was a
toddler. Doctors hope that her case could shed light on the mysterious
genetics behind aging.

"Why doesn't she age?" Howard Greenberg, 52, asked of his daughter. "Is she the fountain of youth?"

Such questions are why scientists are fascinated by Brooke. Among the
many documented instances of children who fail to grow or develop in
some way, Brooke's case may be unique, according to her doctor, Johns
Hopkins School of Medicine pediatrician Lawrence Pakula, in Baltimore.

"Many of the best-known names in medicine, in their experience ... had
not seen anyone who matched up to Brooke," Pakula said. "She is always a
surprise."

Brooke hasn't aged in the conventional sense. Dr. Richard Walker of the
University of South Florida College of Medicine, in Tampa, says Brooke's
body is not developing as a coordinated unit, but as independent parts
that are out of sync. She has never been diagnosed with any known
genetic syndrome or chromosomal abnormality that would help explain why.

In a recent paper for the journal "Mechanisms of Ageing and
Development," Walker and his co-authors, who include Pakula and All
Children's Hospital (St. Petersburg, Fla.) geneticist Maxine Sutcliffe
chronicled a baffling range of inconsistencies in Brooke's aging
process. She still has baby teeth at 16, for instance. And her bone age
is estimated to be more like 10 years old.

"There've been very minimal changes in Brooke's brain," Walker said.
"Various parts of her body, rather than all being at the same stage,
seem to be disconnected."

Brooke rides in a stroller while her mom shops for clothes in the infant
sections of department stores near their home in a Baltimore suburb.
That Brooke is in her mid-teens is so mind-boggling that if another
mother with a toddler asks Greenberg how old Brooke is, she usually
doesn't try to explain.